Piracy and the Entitlement Mentality

No, you are not - it is against the law. The law is there to protect the intellectual property of the individual who produces something through their own hard work and talent, to protect their right to sell it and make a living from it. If someone produces something, they should be free to gain the fruits of their own labour (subject to the normal and appropriate to society through tax and so on). Nobody else should assume that they have the right to steal their work either by producing their own copies of it (especially for sale) or by claiming it as their own. Whilst people should be able to (and generally are legally able to) produce 'copies' in the sense of transferring from one format to another for personal use (copying their cds on to an ipod to listen to them, for example), that is where it should stop - distributing copies of someone else's work (either for money or otherwise) so that they are prevented from getting what they should do in terms of payment for the work they have done is illegal, immoral and dishonest.

 

Why shouldn't a person be allowed to use a car that isn't being used? They do it in Cuba all the time with state owned vehicles. And for that matter, why shouldn't the government be able to confiscate land that isn't being used so it can be used for a new highway? The libertarian wants all those rights but isn't willing to share the rights with others. Just like stop signs, the libertarian wants to be able to not obey stop signs but he wants everybody else to obey them.

Then the libertarian wants to turn stop signs into roundabouts but isn't willing to confiscate enough land to do it. Anymore good ideas Ken?

 

Yes, I have a great idea. Stop derailing threads and create your own.

 

Actually i don't agree at all. I think our Idea's of intellectual property actually stunt our creativity. Sharing music is a victemless crime, intellectual property for music is relatively new as compared to musicians being profitable. True fans will always want original content from the original artist, but i don't believe in the lawsuits for sharing or even sampleing music. Artists also haven't historically made their music by selling albums either generally they make their money with live performances. I think if we got rid of the majority of intellectual property regulation big corporate bully's like Monsanto wouldn't be such a major monopoly of a problem.

I see intellectual property rights as a sort of special priviledge granted to individuals or organizations by the Government. I think this is a form of protectionism that stunts the economy, innovation in the market place, and social mobility and is over all a big problem. So seeing as i think these laws are bad I'm really not offended to see them broken, especially in such a way that shows how nasty the government would really have to get to enforce them.

Last i would like to point out that the Innovations that brought us the Technological Revolution and our Silicone valley sector of our economy often came from acting like Technological pirates, hackers. From Steve Jobs to Bill Gates "stealing" idea's and improving on them has brought us into the technological era. Even though once Apple and Microsoft grew they got in with the government to put up these Intellectual property protectionist policys we have seen the Copy Lefters, people who also dont believe in intellectual property and other technological revolutionaries inspire things like the open source android OS, The first successfull peer to peer, global free market currency in Bitcoins, and music sharing which allows artists in music to gain much greater followings simply by allowing them earlier in their careers more exposure. So you can continue to call its stealing if you like but i strongly thing intellectual protectionism doesn't live in free markets.

 

You're just using lawyer babble. Those terms have no moral or intellectual authority outside of the state's court system. In terms of pure physics, a "song" is just a specific sequence of sound waves. Change any of the waves in the sequence and you have an entirely new and unique song, physically speaking.

 

This sounds offly like the Occupy movement. Big corporations aren't always the reason behind this, there are a lot more things involved. Secondly, you're not taking from just the big labels or production companies, you're also taking it from the artists themselves.

You give minor examples, but even if it was an artist that you semi-liked and they needed all of the money they could get, you'd still download their work, regardless. Even if they were apart of some big record label, as if it's their fault they're being overly greedy. The artists need to survive just like you and I. How would you feel if you produced something and some people didn't really care for your distributor so they decided to steal from you because of them? It's the same principal as you are taking it out on one that effect others.

 

And here you are again pushing the liberal agenda, which of course is the complete opposite of the crazy libertarian nonsense agenda.
To the libertarians' credit, they've all distanced themselves from you by now.

 

Funny because I wasn't pushing for any agenda, not sure how you came up with that.

If other libertarians distance themselves from me, then so be it. The problem is, I'm fairly certain that isn't the case.

 

As a human being, your attitude is something that saddens me immensely. Corporations continually gain power over us - our lives, our culture, our rights - and they're quite good at crying crocodile tears and carrying out propaganda campaigns to achieve this. Piracy is a brainwashing term, in the end - a person obtaining a copy of something is in no way comparable to piracy, yet the term remains. Corporate profits are sacrosanct, yet they take every possible opportunity to overcharge the consumer and underpay their workers, always to the benefit of executives and shareholders. Income inequality - remember?

They've gone so far as to put DRM on media, treating us all like criminals and selling us crippleware out of their paranoia and mistrust of their own buyers. It's disgusting, this entire situation.

And if you think we wouldn't have musical artists without record labels, you're deluded. Labels simply capitalise on an opportunity. They're useful in promoting artists, yes, but they are far from essential. Plus, we can thank them for promoting a bunch of crap while shutting out better artists who won't agree to their terms.

I look at sharing of music and movies as the most efficient mode of sampling available, and yes, it is an honor system. People tend to understand that if they like something, they ought to pay something for it. They don't need legal threats and DRM to realise this! We don't need corporations dominating our lives for these corporations to exist and succeed. They're doing VERY well in spite of all that "piracy" they constantly whine about.

 

Copying is not stealing.

 

That's because most of the advocates against it are big businesses. A lot of the smaller guys, who can't break it into the business because of the big corporations, are currently using torrents as a means to get their product out to the public. They completely understand the medium and go with the honor system, exactly as you've stated. With more restrictions coming into play, it becomes more restrictive than anything else.

Case in point, if some form of internet sharing wasn't made publicly available, where would P2P (Peer-To-Peer) sharing would be right now? In my eyes, it would be non-existent because 'piracy' helps spur up that innovation. Granted, it can be used in bad ways. The fact of the matter is if I own something and want to share it with the world, I can simply setup an FTP site and share it. Even more so, I can use various P2P applications to share it right off of my computer and not have to pay massive overhead.

In the end, bills like SOPA & CISPA are more restrictive than they are helpful. Granted, our IP/copyright laws are horrible and need to be fixed, it doesn't mean we should halt technological advances because big corporations are too greedy to provide cheaper and better quality goods than some re-hashed garbage that most folks don't care to buy.

 

It would help if our system were representative of the people, but we're corporate owned. The EU still likes to put corporations in their place, interestingly enough. Here, they operate with impunity. What ever happened to antitrust suits and consumer protection? It seems to be a part of our past now, together with the 40 hour work week, employer medical coverage and the unions that helped secure basic working standards for laborers across the country. What we have now is more of a plutocracy, and it's bound to get worse. It can only get worse, really, because that's where the money is and there is nothing to stop it right now.

 

The market is called the natural order of things. Complaining about other people "manipulating" it is called being a sore loser.

 

Funny you should say that. Have you heard of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) bill? It's even funnier that the EU isn't apart of it...http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2013/04/19/trans-pacific-partnership-strikes-a-blow-against-growth-and-sustainable-development

If folks don't wake up soon, there will be nothing left to defend.

 

but the primary principle is that piracy is stealing from the artists. Your claim is hard to believe, would you provide a source?

 

It's a creation of political dictate that establishes that intangible things have the same properties of ownership of tangible things.

You say they "should" have the "right" conferred. What is the ideal standard or model that you follow to determine when something is property and when it is not?

 

Interesting idea...If I paint a brush stroke, color perfect copy of a Botticelli, have I stolen it? The argument sounds a lot like the old Native American myth about the camera stealing ones soul...

 

There is an avenue of libertarianism (perhaps voluntaryism) that is pushing against intellectual property regulations on the basis of scarcity (an idea is not scarce). Rothbard, on the other hand, suggests that intellectual property is a mixing of labor and ideas. It is a moral quandary, for how do you make something into property that does not have what is necessary to be tangible property? Rothbard's concept allows for a great deal of subjectivity in the matter, for is the time spent thinking of an idea, labor, and if you didn't think of it first, how can it be your property?

There's plenty of libertarian resistance to the idea of abolishing intellectual property regulations, and in my opinion it's largely on a consequentialist basis and ultimately boils down to a desired end result justifying the means. So, I don't distance myself from pro-IP libertarians, and I think many of them would happily see the current regulations severely curtailed, especially in software where it's causing a great deal of harm to innovation.

 

Agreed. IP laws are definitely another tug-of-war ideal. I look at IP laws as something that's needed but definitely needs to be highly curved backwards. In such, I also look at it as such, an idea isn't a tangible thing. However, if it's been implemented, that's when some copyright law can be enforced.

For example, for simplicity sake I'll keep it relatively simple, if I created a good that could fix anything by using a paperclip, glue, and a pencil, I could protect my rights from folks copying it and selling it under a different cover. However, nothing should prevent someone from using a bobbypin, duct tape, and a wooden stick and doing the same thing. Even if one thing is changed (IE: bobbypin, glue, & a pencil wouldn't be the original idea), it's not my original idea. Again, my idea isn't a tangible good until I've made it a tangible good.

With IP laws as they are now, I believe it becomes to a point that if someone comes remotely close to copying something, they could be liable to be sued. I disagree with that notion and state that there should be a bit more flexibility. Innovation will always spark better creations. Through these creations we can see better goods and cheaper prices for the consumer. In the end, in my eyes, the consumer will always win, and that's what this is about.

If we get into other semantics of this same topic (IE: FDA), the same thought process will apply to that as well. I can see why folks don't believe in any copyright laws, it definitely has validity to it. I believe there should be some form of protection from at least that stand point. However, I definitely side on the fact that laws definitely should be curtailed back, as they give too much luxury to big corporations. I think we can agree that with these laws, it limits the amount of goods into the market. Of which, it goes against everything that I believe in when it comes to a free market.

 

someday you will be able to print physical things, imagine that world

also what about robots that learn... what if something they learned today via watching say tv is copyrighted, must the owner clean their memory nightly

.

 

This is the same market that is making giant record labels obsolete right? Wouldn't complaining about an obsolete business model failing and trying to sue it back into relevance also be considered being a sore loser?

 

Eh...I was around when Napster killed rock, and I took part in the free for all. I had purchased many albums prior and most of the time I was getting a digital version of what I already had, but not all the time. I am just as guilty as everyone else to be honest. I have changed since then, but it is hard to judge kids that want to get at music, and for a crime I also commited. I do support more lawsuits for website like that to make it harder, let the kids learn some computing to steal music.

 

If they're complaining about losing to legitimate means such as legal digital competition, yes. If they're complaining about losing to illegal means such as piracy, no.

 

Aye. Of course, it comes down to control - the corporations that claim ownership of the IP of the artists with whom they contract want sole control over how that IP is distributed, including the right to withhold it completely from the public. I see it as extreme. Given the legitimate uses for making copies of media, I'm definitely opposed to using DRM of any form on media such as CDs, DVDs and Blurays. I think the law should actually forbid sale of DRM-encumbered media rather than protect it, since it's perfectly reasonable for people to make backups and regular use copies (I prefer to treat my music CDs and even DVDs as archives, playing ripped copies of the contents where possible).

As for sharing copies online, there is no harm inherent in that act. Nothing is being taken from anyone when it is done, thus I can't equate it with theft. The only way to try and justify calling it theft is to claim that every copy recipient would have purchased the item if the copy had not been available, which of course is ludicrous.

 

The way IP laws are set up creates artificial demand. If we are talking about the market being the natural order, and we are discussing a product with near infinite availability and low demand via the old model, I would say there is a disconnect between ideology and reality happening somewhere. New technology has made the old model obsolete. If you want to use the force of law to curb market realities, that's fine, but then we can't really talk about "the market" as the natural order of things or even as a meaningful metric.